Everything wrong with what Pierre Poilievre said about the Montreal protests... and so much more

In case you missed it, pundits and politicians the world over collectively freaked out over the last few days following protests in Montreal on Friday and Saturday. The idea that Justin Trudeau did something wrong in attending a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto while people protested in Montreal — a city over 500 kilometres away — was promoted by the right-wing brain trust looking to make a mountain out of a molehill. Unfortunately, mainstream media took the bait and, in so doing, turned a run of the mill downtown Montreal demonstration into something akin to total anarchy.

If only.

Montrealers watched the footage and collectively said “so what?” but that didn’t stop the fear-mongering and oneupmanship brought on by the political class and their corporate media stooges.

Speaking of stooges, no one had a bigger shit-fit about all this than everyone’s least favourite politician, Pierre Poilievre. I’ll get back to taking apart PP’s incendiary (get it?) comments, but first:

Admittedly, it was pretty shocking to see that lady advocating for another final solution and giving the fascist salute, but as the old saying goes, she fucked around and found out, losing her Second Cup franchise at — I can’t make this up — the Jewish General Hospital.

Let me be unequivocal: this is good. Whatever your thoughts and feelings about the genocide of Gaza, the war criminal Netanyahu, Israel’s historic mistreatment of the people of Palestine (etc.), none of that ever justifies invoking Hitler, the Nazis or the Holocaust as any kind of a solution to problems.

The individual in question was immediately identified, and just as immediately shit-canned from her job. She has — and will continue to — pay for her misdeeds. If local pro-Palestinian or anti-war protesters played any role in accomplishing this, bravo. Though I don’t normally advocate vigilantism, the protest community has to police itself, and the pro-genocide camp is looking for any excuse to further vilify Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims in general, or anyone championing peace in our time.

All of that said, it seems that the chattering classes might not have realized Montreal had two different protests in as many days, and politicians and pundits who aren’t cool enough to have ever set foot in Montreal evidently didn’t realize that the completely separate anti-NATO protest was an entirely different affair. We’re Montrealers! Of course we’re going to have two protests in as many days. (I spoke too soon, there was another one on Sunday, boy howdy.)

But when it comes to feigning outrage, no one clutches pearls like Pierre Poilievre, who took to social media faster than an upset Karen demands to speak with the manager.

You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed.

This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends 9 years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc.

On top of driving people apart,… https://t.co/FkEAPCnY6g
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) November 23, 2024

Everything wrong with what Pierre Poilievre said about the Montreal protests (and so much more)

Pierre, here’s everything wrong with what you said:

1. There is nothing surprising about protests in Montreal. If you knew anything about Canada’s second biggest city, you’d know that. Because of our fundamentally undemocratic and unfair first-past-the-post voting system, you may one day become prime minister without securing a single vote from our city. And if, God forbid, that should ever happen, let me tell you — you will know all about protest in Montreal.

2. I’m not sure how protests against war in Gaza or demonstrations against NATO equal Justin Trudeau “reaping what (he) sowed” because, ideologically, you’re both more similar than either of you would ever admit. There are no policy decisions made by Trudeau on either Canada’s unwavering support for Israel (even when they are committing genocide) or NATO (when it’s bombing countries into the Stone Ages to “liberate” them) that Poilievre or the Conservatives have ever opposed. Face it Pierre: on these issues, you and Justin are equally on the wrong side of history.

3. There is no such thing as “woke identity politics.” ‘Wokeness’ was invented by conservatives to give themselves cover for all the times they say something heinous and get called out for it in public. Cancel culture doesn’t exist. Credit where it’s due: Trudeau hasn’t spent the last nine years talking about wokeness. You have. So have all your conservative friends. If conservatives really want to ‘end wokeness,’ as they so often say, then all they need to do is shut the fuck up.

4. Also, identity politics — to whatever degree they may or may not exist — have nothing to do with people upset about our complicity in a genocide or our continued funding of an anachronistic military alliance. These aren’t racial issues or gender issues, and have nothing at all to do with, as you mention, region, age, wealth, vaccine status (etc.). Even if you were correct in your false assertion that Trudeau has been responsible for dividing the country this way, it still wouldn’t have anything to do with why people were protesting in Montreal. If anything, these protests and protest movements tend to cut across all those lines, uniting people in a common cause that — and I cannot stress this enough — has sweet fuck-all to do with Le Wokeisme.

5. Again, protests against genocide, imperialism and a host of other issues tend to bring a lot of people from all walks of life together. But you know what kind of protest “drives people apart,” as you say? The “Freedom Convoy” — you know, the protest you went to and were filmed at. The one where a bunch of people honked horns incessantly until it united the entire city of Ottawa and a majority of Canadians against them. The protest that was almost exclusively composed of angry white people with the ‘Fuck Trudeau’ bumper stickers and the Swastika flags. You know — your good friends and supporters! The people who said they were going to overturn a legitimate government because they (checks notes) tried to stop the spread of a deadly, hyper contagious virus. The Freedom Convoy was — without question — one of the low points for conservatism in Canada, and one of the most divisive and disturbing events in recent Canadian political history.

Those are your people Pierre, you championed their cause. Don’t blame Trudeau if no one wants to buy what you’re selling.

6. Canada is very much a post-national state that doesn’t necessarily have a core identity. How could we be anything else? We’re a continent-spanning multicultural settler state built on the unceded territories of hundreds of Indigenous nations. And nearly all of us are okay navigating that reality because we’d rather be something complex and evolving and different and new than any kind of mono-culture nation-state. Canada is complex, and everyone seems to have embraced it (except for the people kvetching about vaccines and wokeness). But Trudeau didn’t invent any of this — philosophers, sociologists and political scientists did, and I suspect you haven’t read any of them.

7. Dude — you have got to get over the passport. No one learns history from their passports. And either way, the whole idea that Canadian history is “disappearing” is perhaps one of the oldest and most debunked myths in the conservative arsenal of argumentation. It is precisely because of these and other changes in our society that we are talking about history. Coming to grips with the residential schools and our status as a settler colonial society? That’s engaging with history. Knocking down statues of shitty historical figures? That’s engaging with history!

But let me tell you something — it is rich, and I mean ultra deluxe super creamy rich — for a guy like you, who jumped up to applaud Yaroslav Hunka as a “Canadian hero,” to say one word about any apparent historical illiteracy on the part of the political class. All of parliament — yourself included — participated in the spectacle, and it’s not like you’re leading the charge to remove Nazi monuments in Oakville or Edmonton either. Until that changes, sit down and shut up.

8. Can you remind me what date it was that Trudeau “opened the borders to terrorists and lawbreakers?” There is no connection between immigration and terrorism. All the major terrorist incidents in Canada over the last 20 years were perpetrated by Canadians. Ditto nearly all of the crime. The last major crisis on our border was during the last Trump presidency, when people fled for refuge in Canada because they feared deportation. And not one of those people has been connected to either terrorism or crime.

But you’re right about one thing: Constantly suggesting that immigrants and refugees are criminals and terrorists, when there’s no evidence to support this, is pretty fucking racist, and that’s on you.

9. Complaining about MPs speaking out of both sides of their mouths is low-hanging fruit, but more importantly, people who live in glass houses…

10. There is little substantive evidence that Canada has become a “playground for foreign interference” but the evidence that has come out suggests quite strongly that you and the Conservative Party benefit the most from it. It’s hard to take you seriously when it comes to foreign interference, because you refuse to get your security clearance. But that’s okay, you can start fighting foreign interference in Canadian politics by encouraging the American hedge fund that owns Postmedia to sell all its newspapers back to Canadians, and for all those American oil companies and their foundations to withdraw their financial support of the libertarian think tanks that make up the foundation of Canada’s conservative movement.

11. Churches, like other buildings, are occasionally vandalized and sometimes burn down. You, and other conservatives, have been pushing a false narrative that there is some kind of anti-Christian conspiracy in Canada, resulting in a spate of church burnings. There is simply no evidence of this. The most recent alleged ‘church burning’, for example, occurred at a deconsecrated church that was being converted into condominiums. Investigators have closed the file, determining it was likely an accident, not arson.

12. Finally, no, Montreal wasn’t burning. I checked. I walked around that very night, no more than an hour after the anti-NATO protest was cleared away by police. It seems like the police riot squad may have accidentally caused at least one of the fires through improper use of their crowd control equipment. At most, two cars were damaged by fire. The city loses more cars to fire when the Habs make it to the semifinals. Will Trudeau be blamed for the next hockey riot, too? Grow up. ■

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